A Softer World
by Katie Havok
Summary: The first time she tries to write him, the quill cracks. Dismayed, Tina shoves the lot aside before making herself a cup of hot cocoa and retiring to bed. / A repository of various A Softer World prompts from Tumblr. Now with 100% more Gramander!


This series originally began on February 13th, 2018 and is being included here for the sake of thoroughness.

 **Warning for: smut, mixed pairings (including Newt/Tina, Newt/Queenie, and Newt/Graves) and a whole heap of pretention.**

* * *

 _ **Newtina: When you touch me, my mind is gone. The only words I know are lost inside your body. (right in there.)**_

Newt knows he's not much of a talker.

Theseus _(hero; warrior)_ understands him better than he understands himself sometimes, and so they can sit in companionable silence and communicate through pantomime and expression in lieu of phrases.

Jacob _(honorable; kind)_ understands too, and he's always willing to offer Newt assistance. When Newt struggles to express a concept, to find the words — so easily written, yet spoken with such difficulty — he's there to help puzzle it out with gentle eyes and a broad grin.

Queenie _(soft; sisterly)_ is remarkable in that vocalization isn't necessary _at all_. She learns to pierce through the accent coloring his thoughts by dint of continuous contact, so when the pressure gets to be too much and his throat constricts, strangling his words, she appoints herself his mouthpiece.

Then there's Tina, who is truly in a class of her own.

She is brave and true, the greatest of women; soft where he is hard, and much, _much_ more than he deserves. Her generous nature complements his innate selfishness; her quick smile and slow temper complete his own mercurial disposition. Better still, she can understand the tilt of his head, the tenor of his footfalls without the benefit of words.

 _(When he kisses her, language is superfluous because everything he needs and feels is there, buried in her skin, ripe for the taking.)_

* * *

 _ **Queenewt: When you're around I don't know how to hide my feelings. I count in binary, in my head. zero one one zero one one and you count clouds. (while you count clouds)**_

 _That's a pretty one_ , Newt thinks, and points.

Besides him, Queenie hums thoughtfully before saying, "Yeah, it's alright. Kinda looks like a cow dancing the Charleston to me."

He laughs before turning his head, taking in her glowing face and mussed curls, her lithe form spread out in a shaft of sunlight. _Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder,_ he thinks, no longer referring to the clouds, and rolls toward her with a wince, feeling the burgeoning sunburn on his back already starting to prickle.

He kisses her breast, just above her peachy nipple. Queenie sighs beneath him, carding her fingers through his hair as he lightly suckles her skin, leaving tiny bruises in his wake.

"Next time, we gotta find a shady spot, honey," she says, gently touching his raw shoulder. "We're almost outta sunburn cream."

 _Worth it,_ Newt thinks and lifts his head to meet her eyes. _You are always, **always** worth it._

"Yeah, but at this rate, you're gonna turn into one giant, walking freckle!" She touches the heavy smattering of marks on his chest and arms in emphasis before biting her lip.

 _Does it really bother you?_ Newt asks, brow wrinkling in concern as his fingers absently trace the ridge of her collarbone, over and over.

"No, honey," Queenie says, pushing herself up onto her elbows. "I love you either way. Eye of the beholder, remember? I just—"

She cuts herself off to kiss him with renewed urgency, her hands sliding over his tender skin, and Newt flicks his fingers to offer his back some protection before opening himself to her once more, there on the sun-drenched hill.

* * *

 _ **Newtina: I hate trying to put my desire into words when my body knows exactly what to say. Come home. (You can't start a fire without a spark.)**_

The first time she tries to write him, the quill cracks. Dismayed, Tina shoves the lot aside before making herself a cup of hot cocoa and retiring to bed.

The second time she tries to write him, a door slams somewhere in the building, causing a blot of charm-proof security ink to mar the fine parchment. Disgusted, Tina balls the letter up and tosses it in the fireplace before snatching her jacket from its hook, stomping off to lunch.

The third time she tries to write him, Tina covers the page with honest want couched in polite terms: _I hear there's strange weather out West and I saw a scarf yesterday that made me think of you and are you trained in music? Ma insisted but it's been years since I've played…_

(It's really all the same refrain, repeated over and over again: _I want you. I miss you. Please come back._ )

The fourth time she tries to write him, Queenie giggles and tells her to, "Relax, Teenie — it ain't like you're drafting your wedding vows!" but Tina thinks that, perhaps, it is exactly like that.

She writes him again and again, firming her resolve — always the same simple wants and needs, always assembled into different words and phrases, eternally circling around to the same point.

Newt writes back every time, and every time, she senses the same desires spilling from the page: _I miss you. I want you. I'll be back soon._

Until the day comes when the promises are spoken instead of written, heard and felt instead of read and presumed.

Newt kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her some more until Tina's breathless with delight, the same word trembling on their lips.

 _("Home.")_

* * *

 _ **Queenewt: Life would be way easier if I were easier. (Fact.)**_

It's not an overt thing, the shape of the thoughts in his head. Newt's gotten better at Occluding, at keeping her out when she isn't wanted. Still, he can't hide it _all_ from her, and Queenie can sense it as his eyes linger on her calves, the way his fingers hover over her corset laces when she embraces him.

 _No,_ she thinks, _not yet,_ but she can feel her conviction wavering the longer it goes on.

Queenie thinks that he probably wouldn't believe her if she told him that she's never done any of this. Oh, he'd believe it in his _up-top_ thoughts, where Newt keeps his ideas for the future and the love of his creatures. And maybe in his _in-between_ thoughts, the constantly changing flux that shines with the core of his personality. But his _down-deep_ thoughts, where the most primal part of him pulses and throbs, where he operates on something baser than food or sleep or irascible, stubborn conviction, would scoff disbelievingly at her confession.

 _(Not for the first time, she misses Jacob and his easy purity. She misses Tina and her simple resolve. She misses the way it was before, and the way it never can be again.)_

"Queenie?"

Newt watches her with mildly worried eyes, head tilted to the side. His obvious anxiety makes her reach for him, cupping his jaw. She's allowed deeper into him at the contact, as she always is, and Queenie presses out a sigh when she's reminded — _again_ — that the layers of his thoughts are but a small fraction of his personality.

His eyes linger on her lips as she outlines his mouth with her thumb. His hand spreads warmly over her back when she kisses him, slow but thorough, just as they prefer it. They part with a sigh and Newt grins when she weaves her fingers into his hair, scraping his scalp with her manicured nails.

"Newt," she says, and his shields go back up as her walls come down — not for the first time, assuredly not for the last — but wanted; _always_ wanted.

 _Not yet,_ she thinks, but her conviction wavers in the face of his mouthless want as he presses scratchy kisses into her neck, and his fingers tremble with an unspoken question as they trace the curve of her spine, over and over.

* * *

 _ **Gramander: I would love you more if you were someone who could love me. (buy your love by playing make-believe.)**_

 _(Inhale.)_

Ardent green eyes watch him from below, the steel band of calloused and unfamiliar fingers wrapped around them both as he sinks.

Newt's back arches, revealing the vulnerable, pale skin of his throat. Percival meets him there, nipping with lips and teeth until the other man pants, desperate sounds of want and need curling around their heads. Percival finds the rough cartilage of Newt's larynx to circle with his tongue, humming when Newt goes rigid before groaning, body exquisitely taut as the individual syllables of his name are lost to wonder.

Percival _breathes_ while watching him come back down. Newt bites his lip while reaching for him, cradling his face between slender hands before pulling him in for a kiss. Percival waxes hosannas against freckled lips, using the pearly spore trapped between their bodies to slick his fingers before tugging, choking, and adding his own to the mess.

 _(Exhale.)_

"This isn't precisely what I had in mind when I said I wanted to see you again," Newt murmurs after a time, "but rest assured that I'm not complaining."

Percival lifts his head from where it's found solace against the mother man's neck. "Well, that makes two of us, then," he says, flicking his hair out of his eyes. Then, carefully: "I always thought it was Goldstein."

"It _was_ Tina," Newt says while touching the still-tender scars on Percival's face, fingers infinitely gentle. "Until it wasn't."

A fatal sort of calm descends like a veil when Percival leans his forehead against Newt's, taking his hand to thread their fingers together. "I'm not good enough for you, you know. I'm old and broken and—"

"More like _absurdly_ stubborn and headstrong."

"—and this promises to end badly."

"Who says it has to end at all?" Newt asks philosophically, before stretching like an overgrown cat. Their stomachs slide together with a wet sound, and his mouth twists into a grimace as he reaches for his wand to Vanish the mess. "If you're really unsure of your intentions, just fake them until they're real. You can't live in Grindelwald's shadow forever, Percival."

"No. Just yours," Percival agrees drowsily, and gives in to the inevitable when freckled and scarred forearms slide around him, cradling his head against a well-made shoulder to card gentle fingers through his hair.

 _(For you, I'll play make-believe.)_

* * *

 _ **Newtina: In a dark, dark wood there was a dark, dark house and in that dark, dark house I think we should get drunk and fool around. (I want dirt under my fingernails.)**_

There is dirt caught in the web of her thumb, and beneath her fingernails. Tina chooses to ignore it.

"Touch me," she murmurs, bringing his hand to her breast and inhaling his complimentary scent of loamy earth as she drinks from the honeyed wine of his lips.

"Anything," Newt agrees and pushes her back until she's reclined against the bearskin, watching him hover over her like a bronze idol.

It is dark in these woods and darker in this cabin but not as dark as the night of her soul, which he gradually illuminates with every touch, brush, and punctuated inhale. Newt slips lower down her body, pressing between her thighs to paint swirling galaxies on the back of her eyelids with lips and tongue until she fists his hair, moaning.

"Do you want in me?" she asks his freckled lips.

Newt groans in answer, dragging his teeth along her hip before climbing over her. Tina guides him with shaking hands, opening to him like a flower until—

Oh. _Oh._

Tina clings to his shoulders in the oppressive dark, using the sound of his breathing, the feel of his scars as her guide as a new dawn breaks through the dark woods, highlighting the freckled constellations on Newt's chest. She connects them with her tongue, traces them with a fingertip, drunk on love, on the flavor of his kiss and the scent of his skin as she spirals ever closer to some unknowable event horizon until she tumbles over and drowns, and drowns, and drowns.

The potted plants adorning the sill nod in greeting when Tina opens her eyes. Newt lays half-collapsed atop her, trembling faintly, overwhelmed. She touches his hair and cheek before smiling.

"It's no longer dark," she murmurs, adding a new scent to her repertoire: the tang of spent adrenaline rushing through their veins.

Newt lifts his head and flashes sharp teeth in answer before touching her cheek, sealing them together with a kiss that tastes like the promise of eternity; that tastes like stars.

* * *

 _ **Newtina: If loud, weird public sex is wrong, then being wrong is wicked hot. (right and wrong are just guidelines to hotter sex)**_

"This is Theseus' desk, isn't it."

Newt slides his lips from her jaw to her ear. "Yes?" he says, sounding momentarily confused before sucking the lobe between his lips. "That's the point," he murmurs when he releases it, smirking. "To…leave our mark, as it were."

"What did he do to annoy you this time?" Tina gasps while tipping her head back, allowing him to blaze a path down her throat to lave her sternum. She clutches at him when his tongue swirls complacent circles over her skin, hissing through her teeth.

"Nothing," Newt says, but his voice sounds strained — especially when she hooks her leg around him, pulling him between her thighs. "I just think it's rather hot."

Tina nuzzles the sensitive skin beneath his chin, earning a gasp. "You would," she teases and rakes her fingernails down his front to toy with his fly. She purrs at what she finds there before cupping the warm mound, thrilling when his jaw unhinges and he sags against her. "Your list of — what did you call them? Proclivities? — must be nearly a mile long."

Newt drops his head to watch Tina open his trousers before claiming her in a breath-stealing kiss. "I wouldn't know," he pants against her mouth, his trembling hands crumpling the fabric of her skirt around her waist. "I've never written them down."

She shivers when his fingers touch her just _there_ , further igniting her interest, before shoving the painful edge of the blotter away from her ass. Newt strokes her in time to her guiding movements before sinking into her mouth for another smoldering kiss, groaning softly.

"I think hot may have been the right word for it, after all," Tina murmurs when they part.

Newt slides two fingers into her, his thumb rubbing lazy circles around her clit. He swallows her inviting gasp before smirking against her lips. "Can we get on with the boffing, then?" he asks with a distinctly teasing lilt, as if his cock weren't straining toward her, flushed red and leaking. "Or do you want to keep it in committee?"

"You talk too much," Tina grouses, grinning at his faux-affront before reeling him in until there is no space left between them and they are one. "Get on with it."

Newt rests his forehead against hers, initiating eye contact. "As you wish," he murmurs, voice distinctly ragged when he begins to move — slowly, languidly, making her ache for it. "Better?"

"I'll let you know in a second," Tina says before stifling a moan, tipping her head back to luxuriate in the feelings he inspires in her. Newt sucks a bruise into her throat, earning another, louder moan before moving his lips to her ear.

"Be as loud as you'd like," he purrs. "No one can hear us here."

Tina pulls back just far enough to smirk at him, already delighting in his flushed countenance, the way his eyes gleam, before latching onto his shoulder and rising to the challenge.

* * *

Come find me on Tumblr at katiehavok, if that's your thing.


End file.
